Disney Prepping Star Wars Spin-Off Movies?

Simon Kinberg and Lawrence Kasdan are already hard at work on films that may not be part of the new trilogy.

If you had the rights to Star Wars you'd be developing a ton of new movies too, unless you're George Lucas of course. That's just what Disney appears to be doing. One week after the announcement that screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan (The Empire Strikes Back) and Simon Kinberg (X-Men: First Class) were hired to write new installments of the Star Wars series, we're getting word that their projects may have little or nothing to do with the work of Michael Arndt, who has been drafted to write Star Wars: Episode VII. Kasdan and Kinberg may in fact be writing films that would supplement the trilogy, kind of like Star Wars: The Clone Wars or Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.

Let's just hope they come up with something better than those movies, hmm?.

The news seems to support Disney's claim that they intend to release a Star Wars movie every 2-3 years, according to Hollywood Reporter, much like the vaunted James Bond franchise. The trade magazine clarifies that Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg are in fact working on separate projects, as opposed to co-writing the same films, and that while there's a possibility that these films could be new installments of the official trilogy that Michael Arndt is already working on, they may be ancillary films "focusing on side characters." Whether these would be existing Star Wars creations getting their own movies, much like the "Expanded Universe" books, comics and video games, or if they would be new characters from Michael Arndt's treatment is unknown.

Hollywood Reporter claims that Disney is attempting to use their Avengers franchise model to bolster their newly-acquired Star Wars franchise, which would imply a string of films leading up to a major Star Wars event of some kind. With news of the films' actual content completely non-existent at this point, we cannot speculate as to how that would play out. Suffice it to say, if you thought there couldn't possibly be enough Star Wars movies in the world, your theory is about to be tested.